I wonder if Barbara would take exception to that? After all, the Tennessee band came into kind of a mess with a lousy team and all of a sudden they are on the damn hot seat? Are you crazy? Do you know the Pride of the Southland used 17 freshmen against UGA? I just want you guys to be nice and fair an know Tennessee has probably the best band in the country.

I got to see a few minutes of it as I was waiting to get out of the sardine can (seats) to go to the bathroom. I don’t know…the guy might have something. Easily the weakest thing I’ve ever seen in a halftime show. My brother and I may very well have been the Georgia fans laughing at him as we were laughing at several UT fans during this time.

And it wasn’t just people dressed up while the band was playing–the band hardly played at all. It was more like a movie with piped in dialogue and “acting.” And there was some bit about “follow the yellow checkerboard road.” It was bad.

That is truth about shoehorning yourself into a sardine can. Now I know why they claim such a large attendance. You have to have someone sitting in your lap in the upper deck.
I, too, went to the toilet and to buy one of those bowls of chili (which was cold) and missed the show. When I returned, my two buddies were standing there all wide-eyed. They were all like, “Did you see any of that halftime thing?”
“No.”
“Man, you missed it.”
“Was it good?”
“It was something…”

This is why you don’t allow the band to take artistic license with the half time show. Go out there, play a few southern rock songs by 70’s bands, do a cheer for the crowd, and get off the field. Oh and if you have a talented twirler, light some batons on fire and let her throw them around.

The halftime show was AWFUL. My buddies and I tried our hardest to be respectful, but about midway through, we were just howling with laughter and we just couldn’t make enough jokes. Some students a few sections over just started chants that drowned the band out.

As crazy as it sounds, this guy might have a point. The energy in the stadium was a lot different at the outset of the second half, and the band may have had something to do with it. However, UT started the game on offense, so it’s not like you need a lot of noise and energy in the stadium. The quiet helps your team. If I were this guy, I’d have a much bigger problem with the video “fire up” clip that they play to start the 4th quarter. Your team is down by 14 and has no momentum whatsoever. What does the UT audiovisual crew have to rally the troops? Loud metal? Hardcore rap with booming bass? No… they’re going to play a freaking emotion-tinged Kenny Chesney BALLAD with a bunch of clips of Tennessee teams from the 60’s running slowly past UGA players. Yeah… that’ll really rally the troops.

Short version: they had a girl dressed up like Dorothy who loved Rocky Top, but she got caught up in a tornado and couldn’t find her way back to Rocky Top. She encounters a bunch of Tennessee fans who tell her to follow the orange checkerboard road, and they go skipping off through the band and the flag girls who wave checkerboard flags. For some reason, Dorothy doesn’t follow them, which would have ended the whole debacle then and there. Instead, she runs into the Tin Man (Alabama, a robotic play on Nick Saban, who needs a heart), the Cowardly Lion (actually a cowardly Kentucky Wildcat, who just wants to learn how to play football), and the scarecrow (South Carolina, and it’s funny to watch a Vol call a Gamecock a hick). But uh-oh, here comes the Wicked Witch! It’s Georgia! They dump water on Georgia, and Georgia melts. But who can show Dorothy the way home? IT’S PAT SUMMITT!!! Hooray. Dorothy asks her the way home. She says just to click her orange heels together. Ballgame. During all of this, the band’s pretty much just standing there, and occasionally they play somewhere over the rainbow. And, of course, they play Rocky Top for the 98th time when Dorothy finally gets back to Rocky Top.

Sick of hearing rocky top. It’s like good play….rocky top, bad play….rocky top, no play…rocky top. The band can entertain a UT crowd at halftime easily by running that dang dog around and repeating rocky top stanzas a million times

That’s surprising. I wasn’t at Saturday’s game. I was, however, in K-vile for the ’09 UGA/UT game and, as much I has dislike everything about the Vols, I have to admit the UT band put on an outstanding show at halftime. One of the best I’ve seen in a long time. Man, thinking about that game just brought up memories of our special teams and defense outscoring our offense; our DEs and LBs repeatedly getting torched by the bootleg, Joe Cox getting picked on a ball he was throwing out of bounds, and my (at the time) 9-year-old son asking me as the final whistle blew, “Daddy, can we never come back to this place?” …..

I know how your son feels, I had a blast there this time around and a few times in the past, but I always dread it.

And I was really disappointed on Saturday because I was actually looking forward to seeing their band! I remembered that they usually do intricate marching circles or something like that and it was really cool to watch. I’m not a band guy by any stretch, but it’s fun to watch some of the more difficult acts. Instead, we got poorly lip synced dialogue, a dumb attempt at humor, and something that every high school drama club that I’ve ever been around would have refused to be a part of.

I think it sucks that we don’t send the Redcoats on the road anymore. However, I suspect that it is all about money. The athletic department can easily afford to foot the bill to send them on the road, but when you consider that they’re also sitting in seats that UGA can sell to road fans instead, that’s when it becomes a bit of a bigger swing in terms of cash.

Supposedly there was a kind of “gentleman’s agreement” among the SEC band directors that the schools would only take the full band to one SEC road game (doesn’t necessarily include the WLOCP because it is a neutral site game).

They idea was that it was unfair that some schools (UGA, Bama) could send their bands to more games than other schools (the Mississippi schools) could. May not be true, as the current director lies a lot and has shown that he won’t fight with the AA over anything. There would be no incentive for a school to go along with an ageeement like that though. Hurts the experience of the band members, the fans, and the team. That’s supposedly the story, though.

I have also heard that many SEC schools had begun limiting the number of tickets they made available to opposing bands. That way, they can restrict the size of the band coming to the game (obviously affects us and Bama the most). That may be more likely.

The third possibility is that the AA just decided they’d rather sell those tickets to students/regular fans instead of buying them for the band. That would be another situation where the director should stand up for the band, but… historically, that’s just not something he would do.

It’s actually an SEC-wide decision. Each band gets one SEC East away game and one SEC West away game. Our East game is always going to be Florida, and our West game is probably always going to be Auburn. Unless we play Auburn at home and Bama on the road one year.

As a former Redcoat, I feel like I lucked out in my tenure. My first trip to Neyland was the Hobnail Boot, and my last trip was the 41-14 beatdown. Those were the days.

Call me crazy, but I thought the show was kind of awesome, if for no reason other than its audacity. The cheese seemed to be laid on deliberately thick, and I give them props for so openly trolling so many other SEC programs, which I’m kind of surprised you don’t see more of in halftime shows in this conference.

I was not there for the this weekend so i cannot comment on that half time show. But the worst I ever saw was UF’s during the 08 Cocktail Party. The Red and Black came out and did a damn good tribute to an 80s Rock Band, I think It was Journey. Then UF did covers of classic cartoon theme songs. The Jetsons, the Flintstones, it was f’ing disgraceful. We not only won the game we won the half time show too.

Call me crazy, but I am completely indifferent to whether any band plays at all during halftime. Halftime for me is time to use the restroom, restock at the concession, and dissect the trends of the first half with football-competent company. I recognize it as a necessary evil so that both football teams can rest and restrategize. I would move that gladiator fights on the 50-yard line replace band performances, if in the end, something must be done. Admittedly, my non-musicality and general underapprecation of culture may be informing this opinion.

Explaination of the sardine can that is Neyland stadium – At the hobnail boot game I had some UT people sitting behind me in the section that is actually closer to the moon than it is the field. We were all accusing people around us of being out of their section becuase there was no way that UT actually expected to get normal size human beings in those seats. It turns out that when Michigan expanded their stadium UT wanted to keep up. The most cost effective way to do this was to just shrink every seat in the stadium by 2 or 3 inches. True story.

The Tennessee band hasn’t been good for a long time. They don’t play well and they don’t always play together. Recently they’ve developed the tinny sound you expect from Tech and they have no music program at the school. The three best band programs in the Southeast happen to all be in the SEC. That’s Georgia, Alabama, and LSU. Nobody else is close in in terms of the balance, the quality of the sound, and the sheer musicianship. If you appreciate a good band performance, there is nothing that matches the Redcoats at halftime.

Rocky Top was written by a native born Georgian. UT has to recruit out of state for a football team and a fight song, maybe they need to go on the road to recruit a band. That’s a hell of a note for the home of Music Row and Beale Street! If a marching band wants to ad lib the had better be the Marching Rattlers.